Later in the hospital they were dabbing at my knees with pieces of cotton that had been soaked in something. It burned. My elbows burned too. The doctor was bending over me with a nurse...

That evening I started drinking. It wasn’t going to be easy without Katherine. I found some things she had left behind—earrings, a bracelet. I’ve got to get back to the typewriter, I th...

Back in L.A., there was almost a week of peace. Then the phone rang. It was the owner of a Manhattan Beach nightclub, Marty Seavers. I had read there a couple of times before. The club ...

these women are supposed to come and see me but they never do. there’s the one with the long scar…

the waste of words continues with a stunning persistence as the waiter runs by carrying the… tray

We got back to 1010. I had my check. I’d left word that we didn’t want to be disturbed. Tammie and I sat drinking. I’d read 5 or 6 love poems about her. “They knew who I was,” she said....

after the slaughter house there was a bar around the corner and I sat in there and watched the sun go down through the window,

So gramps wrote Joyce a big check and there we were. We rented a little house up on a hill, and then Joyce got this stupid moralistic thing. “We both ought to get jobs,” Joyce said, “to...

looking out the window smoking rolled cigarettes drinking Sanka and watching the workers come on in

That evening the phone rang. It was Mercedes. I had met her after giving a poetry reading at Venice Beach. She was about 28, fair body, pretty good legs, a blonde about 5~feet-5, a blue...

she was hot, she was so hot I didn’t want anybody else to have… and if I didn’t get home on time she’d be gone, and I couldn’t bear… I’d go mad. . .

call it th e green house effect or… but it just doesn’t rain like it used to. particularly remember the rains of… depression era.